WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION

WTO legal texts

Most of the WTO agreements are the result of the 1986–94 Uruguay Round negotiations, signed at the Marrakesh ministerial meeting in April 1994. There are about 60 agreements and decisions totalling 550 pages.

Negotiations since then have produced additional legal texts such as the Information Technology Agreement, services and accession protocols. New negotiations were launched at the Doha Ministerial Conference in November 2001.

Post-1994 GATS protocolsback to top
These are additional agreements negotiated after the Uruguay Round and attached to the General Agreement on Trade in Services. There is no “First Protocol”. The related schedules of commitments can be ordered from the online bookshop.

Post-1994 accession protocolsback to top
These are the negotiated terms of membership for countries joining the WTO after it was created on 1 January 1995. They include each new member’s schedules of commitments.

Countries’ schedules of commitmentsback to top
These schedules contain the commitments made by individual WTO members allowing specific foreign products or service-providers access to their markets. The schedules are integral parts of the agreements. In the print version these schedules comprise about 30,000 pages for all WTO Members.

Goods
For goods in general: binding commitments on tariffs. For agriculture: tariffs, combinations of tariffs and quotas, export subsidies and some types of domestic support.

Paper versions: available from the WTO on-line bookshop (Volumes 3-32 of the Legal Instruments embodying the Results of the Uruguay Round. You can select the countries which interest you from the titles and order online.)

Help on reading a goods schedule (coming soon)

Services
Binding commitments on how much access foreign service providers are allowed for specific sectors. Includes lists types of services where individual countries say they are not applying the “most-favoured-nation” principle of non-discrimination.

Services database.
Find consolidated schedules of commitments and MFN exemptions
by country, sector, and mode of supply. Data covers the period
January 1995 to December 1999. Does not include data on
current negotiations or on countries which joined the WTO
since January 2000.